


Amnestic Cities

by taking_sweet_time



Category: One Direction (Band)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - College/University, Boys Kissing, Fluff, Fluffy Ending, Happy Ending, Kissing, M/M, New York City
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-01-04
Updated: 2014-01-04
Packaged: 2018-01-07 08:55:03
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,134
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1117961
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/taking_sweet_time/pseuds/taking_sweet_time
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When Harry's around, Louis forgets how to do certain things. Like breathe.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Amnestic Cities

Louis thought this was a great idea at the time, moving to the big city to capture the sought-after American Dream and to expand his horizons, and all that.  It’s odd, how easy they made it sound from the other side of the Atlantic, and how hard it actually seems to be now that he’s here.  

He probably should have known what was waiting for him the second he stepped up out of the subway and into the city to realise that New York was not a big apple but a sputtering garden of industrialised roses, and _YEAH,_ maybe he had been a little intrigued by the idea of seeing a granny-smith apple tree growing on each lot, but he supposed he couldn’t believe everything he’s heard on _The Office_ _._ Now, he’s trying desperately to get used to his disappointingly un _apple-_ ing (he’s so hilarious, he cracks himself up very regularly) apartment, which is a glamorous concrete studio with a total of zero bedrooms and two hundred and forty-eight square feet, while he completes a stupid amount of coursework assigned to him by the foreign exchange college he’d somehow charmed his way into a couple of weeks earlier.  It’s better than attending a corporeal university here in New York but he can’t help but feeling that this is the beginning of some secluded dictator’s plan to facelessly dominate all of mankind.  Every now and then, he feels a guilty twang in his gut for the shame of conforming but seeing as the most that he’s ever accomplished in his life involves twenty-one hotdogs and a “Thanks for Participating” ribbon, he doesn’t think he’d be able to do much for the cause in the first place. 

So he lives, in this apple-less garden of metal ruled by an unrecognised Big Brother with no foreseeable glimpse of achievement insight, and as long as the only bits of light in his life are occupied by his battered up Vespa and a $4.95 Sbarro’s frozen pizza every night, things aren’t going to change. 

It’s not until he sticks his key into the lock and turns to no avail that he thinks, well, maybe they’re getting worse.  He swears quite colourfully under his breath as he jiggles the key in the jack, twisting it back and forth, left to right and then right to left, and then wriggles it again, and his foot starts tapping because the rhythm sounds suspiciously like that of Jingle Bells even though it’s July and he’d probably be gunned down in the streets if anyone heard him humming Christmas songs in the middle of the summer, and _still,_ the lock doesn’t turn.  

It’s not the first time he’s had trouble with this door.  It’s not really fair that sometimes he’s not able to actually get _inside_ of it, but he guesses that’s the price for paying only eight hundred dollars a month for this un _apple-_ ing bunker.  Still, he’s sweating in his windbreaker as the dumb humidity gathers on the back of his neck, and he’s genuinely concerned for the well-being of the frozen pizza cradled gently in a shopping bag swinging from his arm.  Grumbling to himself and blowing half-hearted puffs of cool air into the plastic bag in a dire hope to resurrect his surely thawing dinner, he hears the clumsy, dragging footfalls of awkward feet.  Though he’s not sure how else he’ll get inside his apartment, he stubbornly resolves _not_ to ask whoever is trampling up the stairs for help, because he’s got _some_ dignity (the “Thanks for Participating” title notwithstanding).  Then, he gets an eyeful of lopsided curls and green eyes the shape of apple seeds, and he jumps to his feet, thinking that, well, there are exceptions to every rule.

“Hullo,” Apple Seed says, all slow and low and eau, and the sound of the work makes Louis’s eyebrows involuntarily arch like apple stems because he doesn’t think he’s ever heard such a boring voice in his entire life.  

“Hey, mate,” Louis says, voice much higher than it usually is because _a)_ his lifeline is dying in his arms in the form of an oval of dough and _b)_ he’s busy trying to figure out both how this guy is managing to sweat and look like a Burberry model at the same time and how the hell he hasn’t noticed him around here before.  

“Locked out?” The boring-est voice chuckles brightly as his eyes dart from Louis’s frantic face to the keys swinging from the stupid lock, which Louis is struggling very hard against calling a deadbolt ( _badumm, tsss_ _)_ and he waits while Apple Seed sets down what he’s carrying – an ugly yellow flower pot the colour of ageing apple cores and his own set of keys – to take a look at Louis’s lock.  

“These doors can be tricky sometimes,” he says happily as he pressed the weight of his right arm onto the key and gives it a firm twist, “You just…gotta…” and Louis hears the lock _chick_ reluctantly, letting the door swing open in defeat. 

“Thanks,” Louis says, relieved as he gathers his pizza to his chest and rises to his feet. 

“Yeah,” Apple Seed beams.  “You just have to push the key a little farther to the left, is all, and it should be fine.”  He sighs, looking so inexplicably happy for someone living in this industrial garden as he scoops his watering can back into his hand – something that is too tan and too lovely for a limb that only sees the light of Northeastern America – and he looks Louis up and down, apple eyes amused.  “Don’t let yourself get locked out again, not in this heat!” He laughs, nodding towards the sun sinking lower in the sky and tapping insistently on the backs of their necks.  “I guess you could call your lock a _deadbolt,_ ” He adds gleefully, looking as if Christmas has just come early, and Louis’s jaw drops to his chest because oh yes, there are exceptions to every rule, for sure.  

Of course, Louis lets himself get locked out again no less than thrice in the next week, not on purpose but simply because he’s apparently lost the necessary manpower to inactive marathons of _Kourtney & Khloe take Miami _and endless reruns of _Mean Girls 2_ (may the holy universe be damned if anyone ever discovers his embarrassing Netflix Queue), and it takes him more than a couple of minutes to get the damned lock to even click before he has to take a moment to catch his breath and prepare to actually let himself in.  _If anyone asks,_ he thinks to himself, cheeks ashamedly pink with effort as he throws all his weight into the key for the third time that week,  _I got it on the first try._ _  
_

_~_

 

Louis’s gone a solid three weeks without getting any of the textbooks required for completing his abroad studies, and after a furious phone call from his mum, who had recently seen one of his progress reports, he decides it’s worth a trip to the library.  He’s halfway across the courtyard of the apartment block when he realises he’s no bloody idea where he’s going.  When he spots a bushel of what looks like chocolate silk bobbing in curly tufts above the heads of the other New Yorkers past the subway gate, he decides that it’s purely coincidental and dives for Apple Seed’s lanky arm.  

“Wha- Oh,” Apple Seed says, and even when he’s surprised his voice is slow, low, and eau, and just _so_ boring, and Louis has to work very hard to stifle a snigger before he tugs on the edge of Apple Seed’s flannel with a question.   “Nice to see you again…” Apple Seed trails off, realising he doesn’t know Louis’s name, and Louis grins, sticking his hand out.

“’M Lou.”  Louis almost snorts when he learns that Apple Seed’s name is Harry, because it’s stupidly fitting, and he stands on his tiptoes to be heard through the bustle.

“You’ve helped me out before, yeah, Harry?” He asks.  “I was wondering if you could direct me to the nearest library.” Louis thinks that he has never seen someone so excited to lift a finger and say, “That way” because he does it like he’s skipping down the Yellow Brick Road.  

“If you just head down Lefferts Boulevard and take a right on ninetieth, there’s a little place at the end of the no-through-road.  Brilliant selection,” he grins, and Louis has to pause for a moment because of the way ‘Boulevard’ sounds rolling off of Harry’s tongue, and he claps Harry on the back with a thanks, having to stand on his toes to reach.  

“Let me know if you need any more help!” He hears Harry call after him, sounding potentially amused as Louis saddles his Vespa and sputters down Lefferts.  He doesn’t blush.

 

~

 

Louis’s halfway down the hallway of the concrete complex he nests in, just home from a trip to the Quick Mart for out-of-season eggnog and good old Sbarro’s when the eggnog decides that Louis’s life isn’t fucked up enough as it is and it breaks through the bottom of the bag.  The creamy stuff is splattered several square yards across the floor and all over his chest, legs, arms, face, and all other visible external body parts.  Louis looks mildly like a sexcapade.  

He groans and drags his palm over a slap of eggnog dripping from his chin, and he can’t help but lick it off his fingers, because hey, he bought it for a reason.  

“Hullo?  What was’at?” he hears a slow, low, eau, and stupidly boring voice peep down the hall as a door opens, and he groans, because of _course_ the attractive apple seed would find him like this.  “Why, Louis,” he says, eyes wide with surprise as he steps into the hallway to see him, head to toe in white.  He props his hands on his hips, looking like a stern mother who’s caught her son out after hours.  “Now, have you robbed a dairy farm or had a lot of sequential fucks lately?”  Louis’s heart doesn’t stutter and his stomach doesn’t give birth to a clan of butterflies.  

“Oh,” Harry says, shuffling over to Louis is fucking kitten slippers and a flannel that’s only buttoned up to his navel, because hey, why not exert an unreasonable amount of sexual longing and tension upon the rest of the world, and drags a finger over Louis’s arm to taste the eggnog.  “You’ve spilt your egg milk punch, haven’t you?”  And let Louis be shot if he’s ever heard _anyone_ else use the phrase ‘egg milk punch’ instead of eggnog before.  He’s not blushing.

“Damn it to hell,” Louis sighs, letting his pizza fall to the floor with a clunk while Harry grins, looking all to amused, and Louis seriously considers hitting him over the head with the shattered carton.  

“Hold on,” Harry chuckles, shaking his head as he vanishes into his apartment, which is probably a lot nicer than Louis’s, and he returns with a couple of washcloths embroidered with turtles.  He hands one to Louis and begins patting him down, and once Louis is only somewhat dripping with cream Harry straightens the hem of wrinkled shirt.  

“You’re kind of helpless, aren’t you?” he muses, eyes flickering from the lock to the library card sticking out of Louis’s pocket to the eggnog on the floor, and Louis’s jaw drops.  He’s quite frankly offended.  By the time he’s thought of a couple of decent insults, Harry’s laughing and closing his door again, waving goodnight to Louis.  

 

~

 

Louis isn’t sure why he does it, but he’s got a feeling that it either has something to do with the fact that he’s bored half to death and his stomach is grumbling like a bottomless pit or with the fact that Harry has just stepped into the hallway without a shirt, and Louis isn’t really okay.  

Well, whether it has anything to do with those dark tattoos or not, Louis’s mouth is suddenly open and even though he’s got a towel wrapped around his waist and toothpaste smeared across his cheek, he opens his door and hollers something about not knowing where he can find a decent pizza shoppe in this godforsaken city.  Harry replies with something along the lines of “How bloody helpless are you?” and Louis sincerely hopes Harry believes he’s just hungry and really wants a pizza at the moment.  Which is half true.  Harry shouts directions down the hallway.  

“You’re too far away, I need help hearing you!” Louis shouts back, because he really is far away and _a)_ he can’t decide whether he said Oak Circle or Oak Avenue, and _b)_ he can’t decide whether or not the tattoo on his belly is bird or a butterfly and it’s somehow crucial to the fate of the universe that he knows right _now._

It seems that Harry takes a long time to decide whether or not Louis is messing with him, because he shakes his head and sighs before walking down the hallway to tell Louis that the safest way to Angelo’s Pizza by Vespa was through Tautnam Court and that Louis has beautiful eyes (well, he doesn’t actually mention that last part but Louis knows he has to be thinking it) and he’s halfway back to his apartment when Louis calls after him and tells him he’s forgotten where he’s parked his Vespa.  This is one-quarter true because he’s seventy-five percent sure he parked it on the south side of the building.  But hey.

The percentage of Harry’s sighs filling the atmosphere gradual rises as Louis drags him downstairs to the lobby, and even though they have a view of his Vespa no more than five feet from the front doors Louis claims he can’t see it – one eighth true because when Louis was five he needed reading glasses.

“Harry, I forgot where Tautnam Court is,” he says seriously as he saddles his Vespa and turns the ignition, and Harry eyes Louis suspiciously like he’s a toddler that’s somehow been possessed by Satan before he slowly lifts a finger to point across the street, saying “There, that is Tautnam Court.  Louis, you’ve lived here for months.”

“Traumatically induced amnesia,” Louis explains solemnly.  One sixteenth true because he hit his head on the doorframe when he left his house a couple of years ago.  

“Well, you know where it is now!  Go get your pizza already,” Harry says, a slow smile crawling onto his face as he thinks Louis might be pulling his leg.  

“I can’t,” Louis exclaims suddenly, and when Harry throws his arms into the air and asks why the hell not, he has to take a moment to think of an excuse.  “I forgot where to go—” And before Harry can interrupt and point to the Tautnam Court street sign again he jumps in finishes, “After I go through Tautnam. I don’t remember where to go after that.”  Harry sighs.

“Go through Tautnam and on the south end you’ll come to an intersection of Waterbridge and Shelton.  Take Shelton on your right and you’ll come to a shopping plaza.  The pizza shoppe is in the left corner and down the stairwell.”  Louis freezes as the bombardment of information comes at him, and a slow grin cracks his cheeks.

“Oh, come _on,_ I don’t even have to pretend to forget that one,” he says, and Harry blinks, looking bemused.  “You know I’ll drag you down the second I get through Tautnam.” Louis adds, and Harry sighs.  “Get on, then.”

Harry isn’t sure why he climbs on the back of the Vespa and sighs over Louis’s shoulder, but it’s probably because he knows Louis will be knocking on his door that evening saying he doesn’t remember how to get into bed if he doesn’t.   He isn’t surprised when he realises it’s not a bad thought, and he smiles into Louis’s shoulder.  Louis’s a little too smug when he pulls up to the shoppe – without any help from Harry whatsoever, which Harry is finding a little too suspicious – and shuffles inside.  

“Harry,” he says seriously as a plate of pizza is set in front of him.  “I think I need help finishing this pizza.”  Harry doesn’t even say anything at this point as he shakes his head again, biting into a slice of the pizza and watching with amusement as Louis goes cross-eyed trying to spot the string of cheese on his nose.  

“I have a problem,” Louis whispers conspiratorially. 

“What’s that?” Harry asks warily, running his palms over his face.

“I think I forgot how to maintain the existence of my hand.  I might need someone to hold it together for me before it dematerialises.”  And Harry’s wondering how on earth Louis can possibly think that any of these stupid lines would actually work on anybody, but then he looks down to see Louis’s hand in his and he remembers, _Oh, yeah, they work on me,_ and he doesn’t blush, he really doesn’t.  

“I forgot how to open the door,” Louis says pointedly as the two of them walk towards the front of the shoppe, because no _way_ Louis finished with this gorgeous boy, and Harry honestly does not know what to do at this point, so he just opens the door, eyes wide as he spots Louis’s smug grin and the little one shuffles over the threshold and tugs Harry by the hand behind him.  “Harry, I think I forgot how to—”

“What, you’re not going to say you forgot how to walk, are you?” Harry asks with a grin, eyes unreasonably soft as he awaits Louis’s next oddity, and suddenly Louis’s knees buckle underneath him and he collapses to the floor, looking all too please with himself.  

“You might have to carry me,” he says seriously, and Harry rolls his eyes before sliding his arms under Louis’s and hoisting him into a cradle against his chest.  Harry thinks such shit-eating grins should be illegal.   

“ _There,_ ” Harry says, setting Louis gently onto the seat of the Vespa with a flourish.  “What next, _your majesty?_ ”

“I think I forgot how to breathe,” Louis says, eyes bright, and Harry’s stomach doesn’t flutter and he doesn’t blush.

“You’re talking,” Harry points out, mouth dry.

“It’s a trap,” Louis says.  “The aliens, you know.”

That’s all Harry needs to hear before he seals his mouth over Louis’s, and as awful as it sounds his number one priority isn’t administering legitimate CPR.

“I have a secret to tell you,” Louis breathes against Harry’s chin as he cheeks his jaw.  His fingers are tiny on Harry’s broad jaw.  “I didn’t forget how to breath.”

“You don’t say,” Harry says, and kisses him again. 


End file.
